Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Nov 10, 2022
Date Accepted: May 4, 2023
Using Baidu Index Data for Improving Chickenpox Surveillance in Yunnan, China: Infodemiology Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Chickenpox is an old but easily neglected infectious disease. Although chickenpox is preventable by vaccines, vaccine breakthroughs often occur, and the chickenpox epidemic is on the rise. Chickenpox is not included in the legal communicable diseases. The Baidu index can supplement the traditional surveillance system for infectious diseases in China, such as brucellosis and dengue. The number of reported chickenpox cases and internet search data also showed a similar trend.
Objective:
This study aims to develop an efficient disease surveillance method that uses Baidu Index to assist in traditional surveillance.
Methods:
Chickenpox incidence data (2018.1-2021.6, weekly) reported by the CDC of Yunnan Province were obtained to evaluate the relationship between the incidence of chickenpox and Baidu Index. We applied a support vector machine regression model (SVR) and a multiple regression prediction model with BID to predict the incidence of chickenpox.
Results:
The analysis showed that there was a close correlation between the weekly number of newly diagnosed cases and the BID (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.806). The two models were compared, the better one which demonstrated that the SVR model performed better in all the applied measurements as follows: fitting effect, R2=0.922, RMSE=100.6828 and MAE=73.3813; and prediction effect, R2=0.590, RMSE=174.3768 and MAE=157.8277. In addition, we applied the SVR model to predict the number of reported cases weekly in Yunnan from June 2021 to April 2022 using the same period of the BID. The results showed that the fluctuation of the time series from July 2021 to April 2022 was similar to that of the last year and a half with no change in the level of prevention and control.
Conclusions:
The present findings indicated that the BID in Yunnan Province can predict the incidence of chickenpox in the same period. Thus, the BID is a useful tool for monitoring the chickenpox epidemic and for complementing traditional monitoring systems.
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